I can’t understand why Senate Democrats would agree to this. Republicans are in a panic over the Latino vote; liberals have never had them in a more vulnerable position than they do now. If you’re Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer, why let the GOP off easy by settling for a limited amnesty that helps Republicans repair their image with Latinos while legalizing only a subset of the illegal population? Why not drive the hardest bargain you can and go for broke with full-blown comprehensive immigration reform?

...Rest assured that if the bill passes, all of these requirements will be summarily attacked in court by immigration lawyers in hopes of having them expanded or nullified, especially the provision excluding any new illegals who arrived within the past five years. Likewise, if there’s no pathway to citizenship included in the original bill because that’s where GOP fencesitters draw the line, Democrats will get straight to work afterward on pushing for an amendment to add one...

...even with a shift ongoing among Republicans on this issue, any amnesty bill is still going to pass primarily with Democratic support. (If it gets through the House, it may well be that only a minority of Republicans end up supporting it.) It’s a Democratic president who’ll sign it into law. If you’re a voter who cares about this issue, the lesson will be that you’re better off lining up with Democrats — at least in the near term — because (a) the Democrats get results and (b) Republicans will do most anything they can to try to get back in your good graces. Meanwhile, we’ll have ended up setting millions of people on a path to citizenship, and if the last 30 years are any guide, at best those voters are likely to break roughly 60/40 for Democrats on election day. Ronald Reagan amnestized millions of people in his second term. A few years later, his VP got a smaller share of the Latino vote than he did. Four years after that, he got a smaller share still. And four years after that, Bob Dole bottomed out at 21%. For all the angst over Romney’s showing among Latino voters this year, as a share of the electorate he actually did better than Bush in ’92 and Dole in ’96. If the GOP’s going to do amnesty, it had better do it because it fervently believes it’s the right thing to do. That’s the only way to justify the electoral losses it’s going to take from this...